Doctor Negligently Prescribes High Doses Of Pain Medication

Medication Errors

A doctor in Colusa, California has been accused of negligently prescribing high doses of pain medicine to several patients. The accusation claims that the doctor was negligent when he was prescribing opiates, such as OxyContin, Norco, and methadone. There were seven cases where patients were prescribed extremely high amounts of the medication.

In one of those seven cases, a 49 year old woman was receiving forty times the recommended dosage of opiates. In another case, a 50 year old man was prescribed an extremely high dosage of opiates. Additionally, that same patient claimed he lost his medications over four times between August of 2010 and March of 2011 and needed refills, which he was given without question. When he was said he ran out of his medication early he asked for refills and he was given them. In the end he was receiving around thirty to forty times the upper recommended limits of the drugs.

Another patient who had a history of substance abuse never had any urine tests for the first two years of his treatment. When urine tests were taken they did not show any of the opiates he had been prescribed which indicates that he was not taking any of the medications. The urine tests did show the presence of methamphetamine and marijuana but it was several months before the doctor refused to see him again.

A 23 year old patient who told the doctor that no other doctor would treat his pain because he was too young to be given opiates over a long period of time. The doctor prescribed him high-dose opiates between the years 2009-2011. Eventually he was receiving 15 times the dosage that is considered a high-dosage treatment.

Overprescribing medication is very dangerous to patients. There are side effects to many drugs such as opioids. The side effects of opioids include addiction to constipation to sleepiness. Additionally, patients are often taking more than one drug that can interact with each other in a negative way. Doctors need to prescribe drugs much more cautiously.

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